Rio gets 3 holidays during Olympics, traffic fines loom

You are here

Share

Rio de Janeiro Mayor Eduardo Paes gives a press conference about Olympic preparations in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Wednesday, April 27, 2016. It will cost motorists a fine of about $425 if they are caught driving in special Olympic lanes set aside for the Rio de Janeiro Games. Paes announced the fines on Wednesday, marking the 100-day countdown until the games open Aug. 5. (AP Photo/Silvia Izquierdo)

The flags of Greece, right, Brazil left, and Olympics wave as spectators wait for the handover ceremony at Panathinean stadium in Athens, Wednesday, April 27, 2016. The flame arrives in Brazil on May 3, and will be relayed across the vast country by about 12,000 torchbearers before the Aug. 5 opening ceremony in Rio de Janeiro's Maracana Stadium. (AP Photo/Thanassis Stavrakis)

RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — Residents of Rio de Janeiro will get three new holidays during the Olympics as part of a plan to keep people off the roads and limit the city's suffocating traffic.

Rio Mayor Eduardo Paes announced the new holidays, along with new traffic fines, on Wednesday as the city marked 100 days until the Olympics open on Aug. 5.

The holidays will include the day of the opening ceremony, the day of the triathlon on Aug. 18, and the day following the closing ceremony on Aug. 22. The last holiday is to help visitors leave town.

Paes also said motorists would be fined 1,500 Brazilian reals (about $425) if they are caught driving in special Olympic lanes set aside for the Rio de Janeiro Games.

The Olympic lanes will start operating on July 25. Paes also said large trucks would be restricted from the city from July 18 through Sept. 18.

Despite Brazil's economic and political turmoil, slow Olympic ticket sales and delays at some Olympic venues, Paes said he was optimistic.

"We arrived at this moment in a way many doubted we could," Paes said "There are some details and issues to be addressed, problems we saw in the test-events. But things are going well in the preparations."

Amnesty International also marked the 100 days, saying in a statement that at least 11 people have been killed in police shootings in Rio's impoverished favelas since the beginning of the month. It said at least 307 people were killed by police last year, accounting 20 percent of the homicides in the city.

"Despite the promised legacy of a safe city for hosting the Olympic games, killings by the police have been steadily increasing over the past few years in Rio," Amnesty said in a statement.

Rio will deploy about 85,000 soldiers and police during the games, about twice the number London used four years ago.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Relatives of Jesse Owens and America's 17 other black athletes from the 1936 Olympics were welcomed to the White House on Thursday by President Barack Obama for the acknowledgement they didn't receive along with their white counterparts 80 years ago.

Along with the relatives of the 1936 African-American Olympians, gloved-fist protesters Tommie Smith and John Carlos and members of the 2016 U.S. Olympic and Paralympic teams met the president and first lady Michelle Obama. Obama congratulated the Rio athletes, thanked Smith and Carlos for waking up Americans in 1968 and praised 1936 Olympians who made a statement in front of Adolf Hitler in Nazi Germany.

TOKYO (AP) — An expert panel set up by Tokyo's newly elected governor says the price tag of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics could exceed $30 billion unless drastic cost-cutting measures are taken. That's more than a four-fold increase from the initial estimate at the time Tokyo was awarded the games in 2013.